Volume 2, Issue 1

Background The article aims to present some proposal of transformation of Polish military administration in the first half of the seventeenth century and its realization in the form of successful attempt to establish the office of Master of Ordnance ( starszy nad armatą ) and failed rehearsal to regulate the question of food supply for Polish army stationing on the south-eastern border. Methodology The author has examined manuscript and printed narrative, normative and treasury sources. He compared the results with existing historiography concerning this topic. Principal findings/Results Affected by the negative results of war against Sweden between 1621 and 1629, Polish and Lithuanian noble elite agreed to establish new office of Master of Ordnance with new tax to finance artillery on condition that King’s domain would be burdened by it. At the same time, the diet rejected all proposals tended to transform the system of food supply for army defending the south-eastern border of Poland, especially establishing new taxes and officials. Conclusions/Significances It was widely expected from the King to prepare the defence of the country from his own sources. Many nobles, especially from western part of the Commonwealth shared the aversion for new taxes dedicated to the defence of the southern border against Tatars’ raids, while inhabitants of Ruthenia or Ukraine were not going to pay new taxes alone and suffer the presence of the troops at the same time. The creation of the office of master of ordnance shows clearly that change in military administration was possible, if the nobility was convinced that reforms were necessary and saw the option to pay for it from King’s coffer, in which case the complaints of the opponents were gladly dismissed. It seems that in the case of army supply too many parliamentarians and their electors did not see the sufficient need for a change and rejected the idea to burden the possessors of King’s estates by new tax.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, the political and economic situation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was difficult and unstable. This period was brimming with military conflicts, the most important of which was the Great Northern War, and contributed to devastation and impoverishment in many areas of the country. The post-war damage in cities and villages could be felt among civilians for many years. While women did not take part in military operations directly, they were interested in the reports from the war front, they caught up on political news, and sometimes personally experienced the toll of the war since Saxon, Swedish, and Russian troops, which were marching across the country, plundered their lands and homes, instilling fear and terror among the residents. And yet there was something that played an important role in the fight against the destructive enemy – a possibility to gain influential patrons and use their authority as a “shield” protecting one’s property from the troops and aggressive neighbours. Respect for some people from the ruling spheres or local elites as well as fear for their revenge built a barricade of sorts, strong enough to protect their clients from adverse actions of the destroyer.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its various branches carry the prudent legacy of its ancient history. Since its creation in 1927, time and again, the PLA has acted as an effective arm of the vanguard party in establishing and securing the Heaven. Following the theoretical underpinnings of China’s paramount leader Mao, today the PLA is a formidable force capable of conducting operations in every domain of war. However, under President Xi Jinping, the PLA has undergone considerable restructuring and modernization. This article aims to briefly understand and analyse such structural reconfigurations and modernization plans. It uses academic, journalistic, and Sino-American official sources in exploring the PLA’s restructuring and modernization. It concludes that the PLA has undergone massive structural reconfiguration and modernization in terms of material and doctrine. It also highlights that the renewed deployments of the PLA under a renewed doctrinal awakening and a strategic thought could have a great impact on its future operations.

In the years before World War II, the US Navy developed and refined a particular culture of command. Outwardly, this culture emphasized decentralized authority; it relied on clear mission-based orders that provided direction and fostered the initiative of subordinates. An informal network of connections – personal relationships between officers – supported these formal structures. Intimate familiarity, developed through years of shared experiences and collaboration, was the medium through which the US Navy’s officer corps exercised command. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz leveraged these personal connections and shared experiences to transform the Pacific Fleet and turn it into a “vast and efficient organism” capable of learning, evolving, and overcoming myriad obstacles in pursuit of a singular vision: victory in the war against Imperial Japan. Nimitz’s approach was unique, but it was not unusual; it was an outgrowth of a leadership culture the Navy had actively fostered in the early years of the twentieth century. He used his relationships and familiarity with fellow officers to exercise command decisively and transform his command into a complex adaptive system that accelerated Allied victory in the Pacific in World War II.

With the outbreak of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was officially outside the fighting parties (Denmark, Saxony and Russia against Sweden), despite the fact that the main burden of hostilities was on its territory. It was only in 1704 that its representatives concluded an agreement with Russia and in the following years they undertook a joint fight against the Swedish king Charles XII and the Polish and Lithuanian nobility cooperating with him. Soon the alliance turned out to be “difficult” for both sides. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth obtained military and financial aid from Russia for the expansion of its army. Poland and Lithuania also counted on Russia’s help in regaining the Baltic lands occupied by Sweden, which were also sought by the Polish king and the Saxon elector Augustus II. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth also counted on support in the event that Turkey tried to take back Ukrainian lands from it. On the other hand, Tsar Peter I was successful at the front over the years (including the Battle of Poltava) and strengthened his political and military position in Europe. The tsar also began to interfere in the matters of the internally quarrelsome the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, trying to be an arbiter deciding its fate. Additionally, the prolonged stay of Russian troops there was a heavy burden for the Crown and Lithuania. The common paths of the Commonwealth and August II with Peter I slowly diverged. With the end of the war between Russia and Sweden in 1721, former allies were already enemies. Due to the very wide range of political, military, economic and religious issues, this article is only an introduction to the indicated issues. The author’s intention is to inspire researchers to undertake a new, or revive an already started, historical discourse on the Polish–Russian alliance during the Great Northern War (1700–1721).

Why did Japan choose to attack the United States, and why at Pearl Harbor? The story has ancient roots, starting with the parallels and antiparallels in the geostrategic positions and long-run economic development of Britain and Japan. Japan’s recognition of its economic inferiority and strategic vulnerability in the mid-nineteenth century prompted strikingly rapid modernization. The nation quickly became highly competitive at the Western imperialist game but struggled to adapt as the rules changed after 1917, just as China fell into chaos and the Soviet Union began its rapid rise. While profiting greatly from joining the Allies in World War I, Japan was buffeted severely by the economic turmoil of the postwar era. Together with unresolved social and political tensions from rapid modernization, this led to serious unrest. This extended to the military, which had been given disproportionate political power. Army adventurers sought to continue expansionism, ultimately miring Japan in an altogether unwinnable struggle in China and provoking serious tensions with the Soviets. The rise of Nazism in Germany was seen as providential by militarists, who pushed Japan into alliance with the Axis powers. But the alliance made war inevitable with the United States determined to stop Hitler at all cost.

Since the 1941 Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor, numerous politicians, government analysts, and scholars have questioned how the Roosevelt administration could have been caught so unawares and incurred such heavy casualties at the onset of the Second World War. The postwar disclosure that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his senior advisers had access to Japan’s diplomatic message system through a small joint Army–Navy cryptologic program, called MAGIC, further complicated the search for answers. Although many historians have cited the value of MAGIC linked to Pearl Harbor, few have looked at the overall intelligence value of Japan’s American targets for data collection beyond the first strike situation. Marshall’s ordered comprehensive review of the MAGIC cables in the days following the December 7 attack failed to explain the reason for a Japanese data dump of several hundred messages in length. What did military intelligence miss? What does Signals Intelligence show us about Japan’s post-Pearl Harbor plans for the United States? A deep read of the material contextualized by other intelligence reports reveals administrative optics likely blinded the American nation to Japan’s intended wartime game plan, setting up the potential for a disaster as great as the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

The year 2022 will mark the centennial of the commissioning of the US Navy’s first aircraft carrier USS Langley . In late 1936, the ship was converted to become a seaplane tender and in 1939 is deployed to Manila. Following news reaching Admiral Hart and the Asiatic Fleet of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the arrival of Japanese bombers over Manila is imminent and the Langley is determined to be vulnerable to air attack. Departing Manila on December 9, Langley’ s skipper Capt. Felix Stump served as the officer in tactical command of a convoy that also included the oilers Trinity and Pecos and is able to work his way through the archipelago, meeting up with the cruisers Houston and Boise which pick up the escort duties. Reaching Darwin before the end of the year, Stump turns over command to his executive officer Cdr. Robert McConnell to join the staff of the newly formed America British Dutch Australian combined command (ABDACOM) combined command under Vice Adm. William A. Glassford. Unfortunately, Langley will be lost on February 27, 1942, during a desperate attempt to transport Army P-40 pursuit planes to support Dutch efforts to defend Java.

Many of the books written about Midway focus on the battle itself, specifically the naval battle between the US and Japanese fleets. Most of the emphasis is placed on understanding and critiquing the decision-making of the leaders of the US and Japanese fleets and aircraft carriers. Aside from discussing the contributions of the air forces flying from Midway itself, many overlook the preparedness and contributions of the Marine defenders stationed there. Other than the occasional shelling by Japanese naval vessels, Midway was only ever attacked a single time on the morning of 4 June 1942 and never faced the invasion force the Japanese sent to take the atoll. The lack of information on the actual defenders on Midway has left unanswered the question of how prepared the Marine forces were to defend Midway from the Japanese. War Plan Orange and US leadership placed significant importance on Midway and directed the Marines to defend it. Advanced Base Defense doctrine of the time had seen significant development in the interwar years and was used when the Marines fashioned the defense of Midway. This article will examine the development of Midway as a base and the doctrine for the defense of advanced bases in effort to determine if the Marines were properly prepared to defend Midway from the Japanese.

There are many explanations for the victory of the United States against the Japanese at the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942. Mistakes made by the Japanese certainly factored in the outcome and the United States also had certain advantages. However, an important if not sufficient explanation for the US victory is the pre-war preparation of the US Navy during peacetime. Designed by Ed Heinemann at Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo, California, from 1934 until 1938, the first Dauntless planes were delivered to the navy in 1940, well in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the moment which is conventionally regarded as the US entry into the war. The pilots of the Dauntless, as I will show in this essay, were much the same; they too were the product of a peacetime Navy.

The US campaign for Biak in 1944 was one of the most challenging, albeit little known, operations of the Pacific war. Major General Horace Fuller’s HURRICANE Task Force faced a tenacious enemy determined to hold the island’s three airfields at all costs. Grossly underestimating the number of Japanese defenders on Biak, MacArthur and Kreuger allocated Fuller only two regimental combat teams for the initial invasion in May 1944. Once ashore, the US troops encountered a shift in Japanese tactics from defending at the water’s edge to using inland fukkaku, honeycombed underground defensive positions that masked Japanese troops and artillery. When the task force failed to deliver the airfields as quickly as desired by General Douglas MacArthur, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger relieved Fuller as task force commander and replaced him with Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger. This article contends that Krueger did not have good cause to relieve Fuller; rather, he simply did so to placate MacArthur, who, for a multitude of reasons, pressured Krueger for a fast victory. I assess flaws in the planning and execution of the operation, MacArthur’s motives, and personality dynamics between MacArthur and Krueger to support my conclusion that Fuller was ultimately a victim of MacArthur’s impatience.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the Army Air Corps (soon to be Air Force) provoked controversy by criticizing the Navy’s “tanker war” against Japanese oil, stating that Japan’s collapse might have occurred months if not years sooner had a coordinated submarine campaign against tankers been conducted. For years, submariners pointed to a host of problems as to why enemy oil tankers were not targeted effectively until later in the war, including prewar doctrine, faulty torpedoes and lack of intelligence. The reality – classified until the early 1980s – was that intelligence on the Japanese was so sparse that only through a highly classified signal intelligence effort was enough information derived to target enemy oil. This article will examine the developing and maturing link between signal intelligence and submarines using primary sources declassified in the 1980s. The research will demonstrate that there was no single answer to targeting enemy oil tankers, but only through intense analysis and coordination among multiple Services and agencies were the submarines able to launch their devasting offensive against Japanese oil tankers in late 1943.

The Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) is a fascinating mélange of the old and new of traditional identities and modern concepts. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this better than questions of identity, ethnicity, and nationality as they played out and developed over the nine years of the conflict. This article examines two trajectories on the question of identity and nationality that seamlessly coexisted not only during the Greek War of Independence but also for much of the early history of the Modern Greek State. The first looks at popular understandings of identity and the second the legal constructs that tried to define a national identity and nationality in terms of law that would be compatible with developments elsewhere in Europe. This article explores these questions on the ground but also in terms of legal constructs and their evolution from the period just before the eruption of the revolt to the establishment of the Greek state arguing that these efforts and apparent contradictions can be seen as taking part in a wider European debate on nationality and identity following the experience of the Napoleonic Wars and at the same time continuing long-held identities in the Ottoman state.

The refusal of Alexander I to declare war on the Ottoman Empire in support of the Greek Uprising in 1821 provided Russian military men with a possibility to reflect on the past Russian–Ottoman wars and prepare the best strategy for future confrontation. One of the aspects of this reflection was the growing interest of Russian military planners in the ethno-confessional composition and political attitudes of the local population in the territory of the prospective war theater. This article argues that increased attention to the population reflected the desire of the tsarist planners to avoid excesses of a “people’s war” rather than to unleash its destructive potential. Despite a strong emotional response that the Greek War of Independence provoked among the Russian military, their perspectives on the Ottoman Empire during the 1820s were for the most part quite restrained and conservative.

The tiny island of Psara, located in the northeastern Aegean Sea, constitutes a lieu de mémoire for the Greek War of Independence. Psara occupied a prominent place in Philhellenic discourse due to the spectacular achievements of the island’s fireships and due to the bloody reprisals after an attack in 1824 by the Ottoman navy. This chapter utilizes the case of Psara as a laboratory for examining various questions related to military history (such as the nature of naval operations, their resources, techniques, and command) in an Ottoman and Mediterranean framework (particularly involving the legacy of the Russian–Ottoman War of 1768–1774). It addresses the broader issues and debates concerning the immediate causes of the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821 as well as the perceptions of events (e.g., the looting of Muslim settlements on the Anatolian coast by Psara’s warships). The study draws on a neglected corpus of sources, including the voluminous “Archive of Psara” (Academy of Athens, 1974) and naval diaries of Greek war ships.

In the new hierarchy of space created by the Greek Revolution, Nafplio acquired a prominent position and soon replaced Tripolitsa as the preeminent administrative center of the fledgling state. Declared by law as the seat of the administration in September 1823, Nafplio was a stronghold during the incessant infighting that characterized the Greek struggle for independence. From June 1824 (when its fortress was handed over to the government), Nafplio served as the political and military center of the revolutionary territory. Administrative officials, politicians, primates, soldiers, and an influx of refugees thronged the city, creating conditions for overpopulation, at a time when the Ottoman–Egyptian commander Ibrahim Pasha was advancing on rebel strongholds in the Peloponnese. Based on voluminous archival records, this essay examines the policing projects carried out by the revolutionary authorities between 1825 and 1826 to address public order and security issues facing the city. The essay demonstrates that in the space of two intense years of political and military struggle, enclosed and overcrowded Nafplio became a laboratory for developing civil administration and the creation of a policed capital.

After the Archipelago expeditions of the Russian Navy in 1769–1774 and 1805–1807, thousands of Greeks fled the Ottoman Empire and resettled in the province of Novorossiia (southern Russia). Among the migrants were prominent merchants who strongly supported the Philiki Etaireia (Friendly Society) and the cause for Greek independence. Although Tsar Alexander I could not openly support the insurrection that broke out in 1821, Russia provided invaluable material assistance to the Greek refugees, who arrived in Russian cities such as Odessa and Kishinev. Special committees under Russian officials distributed funds gathered from private donations and public sources all over Russia. The famous Greek cleric Konstantinos Oikonomos also arrived in Odessa with his family. His speech at the funeral of Patriarch Gregory V (whose relics were buried in Odessa) helped solidify the image of the patriarch as an ethno-martyr. Oikonomos served as a mediator and advisor to the Ober-procurator of the Russian Holy Synod, Alexander Golitsyn, who was responsible for gathering information about Greek clergymen among the refugees. Oikonomos also played an important role in distributing donations for the families of the Greeks displaced after the massacre on Chios in 1822. The documents from Russian archives presented in this essay demonstrate the network of Oikonomos and the pivotal role that he played between the Russian high officials and Greek intellectuals, the Greek merchants, and his poorer compatriots. This chapter features an annex with the unpublished correspondence of Oikonomos as evidence for one of the largest humanitarian actions of the nineteenth century.

This chapter analyses the geopolitics of the Greek Revolution and provides an in-depth examination of the specific demographic and geographic factors that contributed to the Revolution’s outbreak and consequences. The chapter probes the geopolitical framework of interstate relations at the opening of the nineteenth century; the topography and characteristics of the spatial area of the Revolution; the human capital that facilitated the rebels (e.g. klephts, armatoloi, sailors, merchants, and intellectuals); and the strategic plans of the powers involved (great and small). The chapter reflects on the founding principles of the Greek state as a great-power protectorate and demonstrates that independence was achieved in great degree due to the geographic position of the Greek rebels on a vulnerable periphery of the Ottoman Empire, where the European states could project their sea power.